photography blog – Page 3 – Catchpole Creative…

We live in a world of digital photography and instant gratification when it comes to seeing the results of your photographic endeavors, not to mention a plethora of very easy ways to alter just about everything about the photo. I love this technology and the freedom it gives to take far more pictures than is really sensible, but I am and always have been a lover of film photography.

I got my first camera when I was 4 and progressed to a film SLR when I was 15. I still have it and it still works 🙂 it looks a lot like that one. My love of photography grew from this little entirely manual camera and I loved it. The only thing I didn’t love was waiting for the film to come back from the chemists…

In the 80s and 90s there was only one solution to all this waiting for photos.

The Polaroid camera.

I always wanted one. I loved the idea of getting my photo developed instantly (well sort of instantly, it takes about 15 mins) but my parents made the point that the photos were not as good as the ones from my SLR and that Polaroids and polaroid film was expensive. They were right of course, so I didn’t get one.

Until last year!

I decided I was going to rush headlong into the world of instant(ish) photography, and fulfil my teenaged self’s dreams (well, passing fancy anyway if not actually dreams). So, some ebay searching and £15 later I ended up with that lovely 1980s red Polaroid 645 CL up there which not only matches my 1980s campervan but also my camping mug! In a fit of Ebay browsing and purchasing, I now own 6 Polaroid cameras. Not all of which I intend to keep…probably…

I am impressed with the way the cameras work, once I learned that you have to clean the rollers on an extremely regular basis…
I have also learned that the original polaroid film, now all expired, does not work very well at all. Luckily for me there is a company called Polaroid Originals, who have bought out the polaroid company and are making new film that works with the original cameras!

I have been playing with these extensively, both colour and black and white and I love the results. Well most of the results, it is still important to have the right conditions 😀 it s doing this sort of thing that makes you realise just how forgiving digital cameras are. Especially if you shoot in RAW!

I am still working out what the right conditions for Polaroids are, and when to slide the little lighter/darker lever around, but I am happy to say I am getting more hits than misses these days…

Also known as North by Westy, it was going to be brilliant, but instead the poor photos got locked up in the gallery for 4 months with no one looking at them!

Poor photos, I felt so sad for them!

A bit sad for me too, and Trevor, my fellow photographer and joint exhibitor. There is something brilliant about seeing your work framed and hanging in a gallery for the world to see. After all, part of the point of taking photos is showing them to people.

The theme for this exhibition was a little different to the first one, but me being me, it did have a degree of crossover. This exhibition was based on pictures taken during trip we took in two little red VW camper vans around the north coast of Scotland. As it happens some of the Beauty in the Mundane photos were taken on this trip and were already framed and ready to go so I used those, plus some more that ranged from abstract and esoteric, to my take on landscapes.

We split the exhibition 50/50 with 15 photos from me and 15 photos from Trevor. We picked photos which were vastly different in nature, but also complimentary. I added in some smaller photos and some lino cuts / cyanotype prints which had been inspired by the trip and all in all we had a pretty coherent and well laid out exhibition…

At least it was well laid out and coherent after we had drunk coffee and moved little pictures around on pretend walls!

It was hard work but it was done, it was set up and ready to go. Ready to be shown to our adoring public and launch us in to the spotlight. Or possibly just to be seen by the good people of Horsham on the way to the theater and the cinema. Our gallery was inside the Capitol Theater in Horsham, and the date of our set up was 16th March 2020.

The date and location are particularly important to this story…

2020 is the year of the global Coronavirus pandemic.

On the 17th March 2020 the Cinemas and Theaters across the UK closed their doors for an (as of then) undefined amount of time. On the 23rd March 2020 the country went into complete lockdown.

So, despite the all of our best intentions, the venue for our exhibition closed its doors the day after we put the exhibition up and 5 days later noone was allowed out of the house (much).

Our pictures hung there lonely and abandoned for approximately 4 months. Making it one of the longest running and least viewed exhibitions in the history of the venue! Luckily for the venue and the country, the Theater has now reopened, but our pictures were taken down before anyone got to see them other than a small number of the Capitol staff.

We have been given an revised date, so you never know the pictures may get another chance…

Watch this space